A good friend of mine is an avid homebrewer and has a pretty killer setup. I was talking to him this week about learning to homebrew on his system and he has 2 extra carboys available, so I am going to foot the bill for ingredients and use his system in a week. RIS is one of my favorite styles and from what I understand getting a darker maltier beer to come out good is easier than some other styles. I was lucky enough to try a Dark Lord this year and started looking for clones of that recipe, anyone have any thoughts on this one:

That's a massive beer. It will be challenge to brew, with all those grains. And it will be a challenge to ferment. You will need a BIG yeast starter and rouse it daily once it's mostly fermented out. Then you will need patience to let it condition for at *least* 6 months. I would start with a nice robust porter, maybe half the gravity of dark lord and just enjoy that.

Just finished drinking a Citra single hop (Munich and malt-wheat for the grist), bottled an oak-chip-aged Brettanomyces English IPA yesterday, racked an Oude Bruin on top of the oak chips from that IPA, and dry hopped a double American IPA on 4 oz of Cascade.

Next up is a smoked robust porter and a couple of saisons. One will be table strength with Mt. Hood and the other a double strength with Saaz.

I'm really going to have to apply myself if I'm going to drink all that beer.

That's a massive beer. It will be challenge to brew, with all those grains. And it will be a challenge to ferment. You will need a BIG yeast starter and rouse it daily once it's mostly fermented out. Then you will need patience to let it condition for at *least* 6 months. I would start with a nice robust porter, maybe half the gravity of dark lord and just enjoy that.

I am meeting up with a guy to get his RIS recipe this evening. From what I have heard it is very good and a tried and true recipe. I will start with it and brew a batch and if it goes well try and modify it from there. As far as waiting, I am patient, that is not an issue at all, in fact it is good because it gives me time to start collecting bottles to put it all in.

Originally Posted by jboyd122

Loads of tasty brew in this thread!

I have a mint chocolate imperial stout in secondary. It should be ready for bottling in about 6 more weeks.

You should vertical it with the mint chocolate one from Stone this year to see how they compare!

So, I made my first beer on Saturday on a good friends all grain system.

36lbs of Grain, it was a monster batch. We had a small issue with the false bottom filter getting clogged with some grain and had to transfer the beer around a bit to get it all worked out. We lost some of the product in the process, but not too much. It is coming in at 10.8% which is less than I wanted, but still plenty good. Here are some pictures from the day:

My buddy lighting the strike water on his System:

Sampling a bottle given to me by the guy who shared his recipe with us:

Me adding the grain and my other buddy making sure all the grain mixed in without clumps:

Perfect Mash Temp:

Mash, you can see the drips on it from us having to move things around to get the grain clogged fixed:

Yours truly filtering the mash to get the grain nice and settled before we transferred to the boil keg:

Transfer of the great black liquid:

Boil Starting:

Stiring it up to make sure nothing burns before we get to a rolling boil:

and the Rolling Boil:

My girl Abi with the boil in the background:

Coil Cooling:

Filling up the Carboys:

Shot of the refractometer reading:

Fermentation setup, started at 68, down to about 64 right now:

I am super stoked at how fun this was, cannot wait to come up with a good recipe for my next brew!